


kid, you're gonna go far

by sundaysabotage



Series: tired head counselor nico [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Nico di Angelo & Percy Jackson Friendship, more of your favourite side characters, percy jackson goes to college, typical camp half-blood chaos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24681946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundaysabotage/pseuds/sundaysabotage
Summary: To say that Percy is excited to be going to college would be an understatement.For someone who never thought they’d live to see 17, going to college is kind of a big deal. It was the start of the rest of his life, a life without prophecies or cross-country quests or bothersome gods knocking on his door for help. Retirement is going to be awesome.But first he needs to clean out his cabin.___Set immediately before the start of ‘i could be your hero’ but can be read in isolation
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: tired head counselor nico [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783837
Comments: 18
Kudos: 322





	kid, you're gonna go far

To say that Percy is excited to be going to college would be an understatement.

For someone who never thought they’d live to see 17, going to college is kind of a big deal. It was the start of the rest of his life, a life without prophecies or cross-country quests or bothersome gods knocking on his door for help. Retirement was going to be awesome.

But first he needs to clean out his cabin.

The summer session of camp is just ending, most of the campers had already left and the last week had been spent saying goodbyes to old friends with solemn promises to keep in touch. Typically, Percy has been procrastinating the mind-numbing task of going through all his old stuff, his ADHD brain was simply not built for boring tasks like _packing_.

Annabeth had told him in no uncertain terms that she was _not_ getting involved after the great packing debacle two weeks earlier when they sorted through the detritus of his childhood bedroom. Apparently, there was a right and a wrong way to shove things into moving boxes and well, you take a guess which way Percy was doing it.

Luckily, he had managed to wrangle Nico into helping him instead. The son of Hades reluctantly follows him to Cabin 3 after breakfast, muttering about how he’s _‘only doing this to get out of dish duty.’_

Like Percy doesn’t know Nico is totally going to miss him once he leaves. Even if the brat would rather stick forks in his eyes than admit it.

They had come a long way from their first meeting on that snowy evening in Maine. A ten-year-old Nico certainly hadn’t endeared himself to a fourteen-year-old Percy. He recalls a series of extremely annoying questions in the middle of a veritable crisis involving Annabeth having just fallen off a cliff. Of course, they could laugh about all that now, ‘ _Remember that time you handed me over to your Dad and he imprisoned me?’ ‘Remember how I saved your ass?’_

Ha. Good times.

The boys are briefly intercepted on their way to the cabins by the Victor sisters, Laurel and Holly.

They are both red-faced and yelling, each girl holding a single white sneaker. And they’re heading straight for Percy, presumably to force him to resolve whatever argument they’re having now.

Sometimes, he hates being a responsible, upstanding member of demigod society.

“Percy, she stole my-”

“- took my shoes.”

“-belongs to me!”

“ -lying!”

“Okay. Time out.” Percy grabs both shoes and holds them above his head, out of reach of the daughters of Nike. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

Both girls immediately begin talking at rapid fire pace once more.

“Enough!” Percy interrupts, gods it’s too early for this. “Holly. Go.”

“Those are _my_ Nike Air Force 1s but Laurel says they’re _hers_ and I want them back!” she snaps viciously.

“C’mon girls. How do we handle conflict here at Camp Half-Blood?” he asks pointedly. They had been down this road _many_ times.

The sisters glare at the ground and mutter something unintelligible.

“I can’t hear you!” Percy beams, using his chipper head counselor voice, perfected from years of de-escalating tension between feuding half-bloods.

“Shield, Net, Sword,” they drone.

“That’s right. Shield, Net, Sword. One round, referee’s decision is final. Go.”

The sister’s reluctantly face each other.

“Shield! Net! Sword!” they chant, pounding fists in unison.

Percy inspects the results. “Sword cuts Net, Laurel gets the shoes,” he declares.

Laurel grins in victory as Percy hands her the sneakers. Holly stamps her foot in fury.

“Sorry, Hol. Take that anger to the sparring arena, work on your defensive manoeuvres,” he advises.

“But-” Holly starts.

“No buts. I’ve told you both before, this wouldn’t happen if you just put your initials on your shoes.” Percy doesn’t think this is unreasonable advice, but the sisters look at him as though he just suggested defacing a Church. Apparently using permanent marker on a pair of Nikes is basically blasphemy.

It would certainly make _his_ life a lot easier though.

“Race you to the arena!” Holly yells, taking off with a split-second head start, Laurel hot on her heels.

A quick, ‘ _Thanks, Percy!_ ’ is all that’s thrown in his direction.

“Impressive,” Nico says, he even sounds like he means it.

“All in a day’s work,” Percy sighs.

They eventually make it to Cabin 3 without any more interruptions, although Percy does spot Alice and Julia, daughters of Hermes, out of the corner of his eye. He’s been politely ignoring their secret counterfeit Mythomagic card scam until it is no longer his responsibility to deal with it.

He has bigger problems right now. Like packing up his whole cabin in under 5 hours. Percy has had Cabin 3 largely to himself for 6 years now and in that time, he had been able to fill it with an ungodly amount of crap.

“Is this stain hot sauce or blood?” Nico asks, staring at a suspicious dark blotch on his rug.

Percy crouches to look at the stain, frowning in judgment. “That is an excellent question.”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Not a clue,” Percy admits. “Best leave it for the cleaning harpies.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t his problem anymore.

The son of Hades scrunches his nose in disgust and begins sorting through the assortment of forgotten clothes Percy had found under his bunk and scattered around the cabin.

“How many blue hoodies does one person even need?” Nico chastises, tossing them at him for inspection.

This coming from the kid who solely sports black T-shirts but whatever.

“They have sentimental value!” Percy defends. He’d had some good times in these hoodies.

Nico is not convinced. “How?”

Percy rifles through the pile. “Well I wore this one when I held up the sky, and this one when I blew up Mount St. Helens. Oooh, I wore this one when I called Ares a pussy, now _that_ was a good day. And this one is from when -”

“Okay I get it you hoarder,” Nico gripes, interrupting Percy’s fond recollections. He’s pretty sure that Nico will give himself a concussion if he rolls his eyes any harder.

In the end they compromise that anything with holes or scorch marks should go in the trash pile, but he draws the line at his old Mets sweatshirt, the one he bought _specifically_ to piss off Annabeth.

“I’m telling you, it still _fits_!” Percy exclaims adamantly, trying to wrestle himself into the sweatshirt which is admittedly a bit more… _snug_ than he remembers.

“It’s _at_ _least_ 2 sizes too small, Perce,” Nico points out, rather unhelpfully in Percy’s opinion.

“I see you boys are making progress,” a familiar voice pipes up from behind him. Percy abruptly stops trying to wriggle his head through the collar of the sweatshirt and whirls around to face his best approximation of the cabin door.

“Annabeth,” he greets in the most dignified manner he can with his head still encased in fabric and his left arm trapped somewhere behind his back, “did you need something?”

“Just making sure you’ll be ready for this afternoon. We have to hit the road by 2,” she reminds him. To anyone else she sounds perfectly controlled but Percy is finely attuned to the micro-inflections of Annabeth’s voice and he _knows_ she’s highly amused.

Percy refuses to give in to the ridiculousness of his situation. “I’ll be ready,” he assures her.

“Good. Do you need some help there, Seaweed Brain?” Percy still can’t see her, but he knows she’s laughing at his expense. Dammit.

“No. I’m fine,” he replies stubbornly.

Like Annabeth will believe that.

“Okay, see you later.” Percy only knows she’s gone because of the sound of his door clicking shut behind her.

“You’re stuck, aren’t you,” Nico says.

“Maybe.”

“Do you want help?” the younger boy asks bluntly.

“…Yes.”

Nico is decent enough to wait until Percy has been freed from the sweatshirt to laugh at him.

It goes in the donation box.

They continue to sort through his junk, candy bar wrappers, CDs, some SAT practice tests, forgotten clothes and a fairly sizable collection of deadly weapons (the celestial bronze throwing stars were a _gift_ from Tyson and _yes_ they are absolutely a necessity for college, thank you very much.)

As they clean Percy rambles about how _excited_ he is to leave. At this point he’s not sure who he’s trying to convince, Nico or himself.

Like everything else in Percy’s almost 18 years of life, the reality of going to college is more complicated than he thought it would be.

Because, in the midst of his joy and relief and excitement is also an inexplicable sense of guilt.

Is Percy happy to be going to college?

Fuck yeah, he is.

He’d been through a lot since he first stumbled across Camp Half-Blood’s boarders at the age of 12. For years he had been the gods’ favourite plaything, ‘ _Percy go here, Percy find this, Percy kill that, Percy, Percy, Percy.’_

At a certain point you just stop caring.

But just because he was done with the Olympians and their bullshit, doesn’t mean he’s ready to say goodbye to Camp. It was here that he learned the truth about himself, where he found true friends, where he met Annabeth, where he learned to survive.

He’d seen so many awful things, watched more funeral shrouds burn than he can count. Even after all he had done, fighting wars, putting his life on the line, walking through the darkest parts of Hell, somehow running off to California to start a new chapter of his life felt like abandoning Camp Half-Blood.

He’d talked about all this with his therapist, Janine and apparently, it’s called survivor’s guilt.

And it fucking sucks.

Percy had started seeing Janine shortly before Apollo had crashed to Earth. There had been a particularly dark period last winter and his resulting breakdown happened to coincide with Annabeth going to spend Christmas in San Francisco with her family. He didn’t get out of bed for a week. (Not his finest moment.)

But it had resulted in a standing weekly appointment with a therapist specialising in PTSD…so…bright side?

He had been sceptical at first, because what good would a mortal shrink be if he couldn’t talk about demigod stuff when demigod stuff was the whole reason he needed a shrink in the first place?

Turns out there are half-bloods with psychiatry PhDs. Who knew?

Dr Achebe, or Janine, as she insisted on being called, was a daughter of Bacchus and she was actually really helpful to talk to. 

So, Percy reminds himself that he deserves this, that he has done enough, that it’s okay to move on.

‘ _But didn’t you think that the last time, didn’t you think you would have your happy ending? And look what happened then. Six months of your life gone. Stolen. Annabeth frantic, Mom devastated, Camp in shambles. All because you got cocky. All because you stopped expecting the worst.’_

Thoughts like these were not uncommon. The trick, Janine had told him, was correcting the thought pattern. Positive reprogramming.

‘ _It wasn’t my fault,_ ’ he tells himself internally. _‘You can’t control the Fates. You fought. You won. You’re allowed to be safe.’_

Instead, Percy focuses on the small things. Packing boxes, trash pile, donate pile, things to keep, things to take with him, things to throw away.

He just keeps babbling to Nico about everything he’s looking forward to, in the hope that maybe he’ll talk himself into feeling like he deserves it.

When they’re done it’s the cleanest his cabin has looked since he moved in at age 12. Percy doesn’t even feel sad looking at the bare floor and the impossibly tidy shelves. It feels…good. He feels good.

Then he sees it.

The Minotaur’s horn. Mounted on his wall, displayed proudly like a trophy should be. The sight of it stirs some complicated fusion of accomplishment and disgust. He was just a child when he killed that monster. Some had even envied him for it. In a way it had defined his entire career as a demigod. Set a precedent of sorts. The great Perseus Jackson, the fool who doesn’t know when to quit.

Theseus had first killed the Minotaur centuries ago, in Crete. Yet it had come back. The monsters always come back.

How could he leave? How could he move on? The camp needed someone, a leader, a hero.

“Hey, are you getting rid of this shirt?” Nico asks, bringing him out of a vicious thought spiral.

Percy looks over at the younger boy, holding up a black t-shirt with the Led Zeppelin band logo on it.

“Yeah,” he says, he tossed it in the donate pile earlier, “it doesn’t fit me anymore.”

“Can I have it?”

Percy can’t help but notice then how much Nico has grown up over the last year. He wasn’t the bright-eyed, naive little kid from Westover Hall, nor was he the closed-off, angry recluse he had been following Bianca’s death. Nico had done so much for Camp Half-Blood, fought for it, made it his home.

And it’s then he realises that New York is in good hands after all.

“Yeah, of course,” Percy says softly.

Nico folds the shirt neatly, carefully. “Cool, thanks.”

Percy gets an idea.

He grabs the Minotaur horn from the wall, slightly dusty, and heavier than he remembers.

“I want you to have this,” he says, offering it with outstretched hand.

“Um…thanks?” Nico says, taking it from him, slightly confused but too polite to say so.

“It’s a horn from the Minotaur,” he explains.

Nico looks at the trophy in his hands, eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “Okay…that’s nice…”

Percy nods, satisfied.

All that’s left to do is say goodbye to different friends and campers then load their boxes into the Prius. His stuff and Annabeth’s, side by side. Like it should be. The sight makes him absurdly happy.

“You know we’re just an IM away,” Annabeth tells Chiron, who had been wheeled to the top of Half-Blood Hill to see them off. Camp Half-Blood had been the most permanent thing in Annabeth’s life since she was seven years old and Percy knew that this was hard for her.

They both knew they would be back, after all, Camp Half-Blood isn’t going anywhere. But even though would still visit, it would never be the same, would it?

Their childhood is officially over.

“My dear, you have an extraordinary life ahead of you,” the old centaur smiles. “Both of you do.” Although he’s trying not to make a scene, Percy knows he’s getting teary-eyed.

“Hopefully not _too_ extraordinary,” Percy says, trying to inject some humour into the bittersweet moment. Janine says it’s a defence mechanism.

Chiron hugs them both and once again wishes them well. Percy knows this isn’t the end, in fact it’s only the beginning. But this time, walking down Half-Blood Hill, away from camp, he can’t help but feel like a big part of his life now over for good.

A fleeting thought suddenly crosses Percy’s mind as they wave one last goodbye to Nico, Will, and a few other permanent camp residents. He wonders if maybe he should’ve had some kind of talk with the son of Hades? Maybe the horn itself wasn’t enough to convey his confidence that Nico was ready to become their leader? Maybe Percy should’ve taken him aside and given him a pep talk or something?

…

…

…

Nah.

Nico is a smart kid, he’ll figure it out.

As he drives down Farm Road back towards the city, Annabeth sitting next to him, her feet on his dash, golden curls glinting in the last remnants of the summer sun, both of them heading towards the future they’d fought so hard for, Percy doesn’t look back. Not once.

**Author's Note:**

> The love for 'i could be your hero' has been so overwhelmingly kind and supportive. I honestly can't thank the people who read it enough.
> 
> Hopefully this gives a bit more insight into Percy's thought process. 
> 
> \--  
> 


End file.
